Since prehistoric times, artists have applied and manipulated paint on substrates. Very early artists might have used their bare hands and fingers, as do children and even artists today, but the use of tools for painting became common very early. Some of the earliest of such tools were likely mere sticks. However, bristled brushes have been known and in use for much of modern history. Traditionally, bristled brushes were formed from natural materials such as the hair of animals attached to a wooden handle. With the development of modern synthetic plastics, artificial bristles have become available also. Bristle tipped brushes are characterized by a tendency to draw or wick a supply of paint into the intersticial spaces between the bristles and subsequently release a portion of such paint when the bristles are applied to a substrate. This may be viewed as somewhat wasteful of paint and moreover results in a significant cleanup problem. Cleaning of a bristle brush in order to apply or manipulate a different paint color can slow down an artist and truly interrupt and impede the creative process. Further, failure to promptly and appropriately clean a brush after use often times renders the brush useless for any future use because the intersticial paint irreversibly dries within the body of the brush. The cost of good natural bristle brushes is generally rising and the cost of synthetic bristle substitutes, while often less costly than the natural variety, also is generally rising.
As an alternative to bristled brushes, artists have also used stiff, spring-like metal spatulas for application and manipulation of paint. U.S. Pat. No. 2,861,371 to Leshik discloses some exemplary steel spatulas. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,099,030 and 2,147,310 to Morrison disclose some exemplary rubber spatulas for liquid and dry color painting, respectively. While spatula-like tools provide some advantages over traditional bristle brushes in terms of longevity and cleaning, the fact that the working portions of these tools are primarily flat, two-dimensional surface effectively limits the manner in which an artist can use these tools for applying paint to a surface to more of a trowel-like action. Consequently, artists generally regard spatula-like tools as a separate type of paint applicator with it's own limited style of marks that has a different manner in which paint is applied to a surface, rather than as a replacement for the more versatile bristle brush.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,609,051 to Braun discloses a rotatable brush having a rotatable tip made of a porous resilient material. Using the rolling application techniques of longer, conventional paint rollers for coating walls and the like, this tool provides another alternative to a conventional bristle brush. Again, because of the different manner in which this tool applies paint to a surface, artists generally would not regard this tool as a replacement for the more versatile bristle brushes. In addition, due to the porous nature of the rolling tip, this tool also has problems with cleaning and longevity of the tool.
Although alternatives to conventional bristle brushes for artists have been developed, these tools typically have a more limited range of marks and manners of applying paint to a surface that are not as versatile as bristle brushes. Consequently, these tools have generally not been regarded by artists as replacements for a conventional bristle brush in the sense that the use of these tools would replace many of the characteristic functions of the more versatile bristle brush in terms of the marks and manner in which such marks can be made, but instead these tools have been seen as alternative types of paint applicators. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an artist's tool that has improved longevity and cleaning characteristics, but otherwise could be accepted as an effective replacement for traditional bristle brushes.